When Jesus of the Bible is Discarded and Tradition Takes Over

We trust our readers will be suitably shocked and scandalized, raising an appropriate objection in their various church settings to the astonishing comment in the Word Biblical Commentary on the Shema (“Hear O Israel”) affirmed by Jesus.

In Mark 12:28-34 a Jewish scribe was determined to search out Jesus’ thinking on the most important of all questions (for every one of us). The question was, “Which commandment is first of all?” The unambiguous reply of Jesus begins with the Bible’s famous declaration of monotheism: “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”

Jesus goes on of course to urge us all to love that One God with all our energy, heart, life, mind and strength.

And now for the shocking and revealing words of the Word Biblical Commentary on this passage: “It is difficult to understand how and why Jesus’ affirmation of the Shema, which is neither remarkable nor explicitly Christian,” would be included by Mark. “If the exchange is thoroughly Jewish in perspective and advanced nothing of the early church’s distinctive claims, why was the tradition preserved?”

We trust our readers will not miss the point, and will share their indignation with friends and relatives at every opportunity.

i) Did you notice how Jesus was dismissed as un-Christian?

ii) Did you grasp the amazing fact that Jesus’ own emphatic affirmation of the totally non-Trinitarian Shema of Israel was ruled out of court?

Indeed, today if one says, “I believe as Jesus did in the unitary monotheistic creed of Israel,” one is liable to immediate persecution and rejection by almost every body of believers gathering ostensibly as a group of claimants to belief in Jesus as Savior.

What if in fact that situation is more horribly distorted than we imagine? What if Jesus were to show up one day at any “Bible-believing church” worldwide and affirm the most important command of all, that we are to believe in no other God but the single-Person God of Scripture, the Father? What would be the reaction in the average Sunday School? Would Jesus be summoned to the pastor’s office for some serious counseling as he had questioned the “Deity of Jesus,” that Jesus is in every sense YHVH as much as his Father is YHVH? (How many YHVHs does that add up to?)

These are issues well-worth some prolonged and extensive pondering and public airing. The “status quo” in theology is crippling and stifling to healthy critical thinking, the very critical thinking which educated people everywhere recognize to be the mark of enlightenment and intellectual honesty.

Can our best brains in theology not move beyond the patent falsehood that Jesus’ affirmation of the creed of Israel is “neither remarkable nor explicitly Christian”?

A revolution is certainly called for, lest we be found rejecting Jesus while claiming to accept him.

Food for thought.